Unshielded Darkness
by Natsuki
Summary: Noin's relationship with Nagoya Natsuki -- Dangerous? Painful? Or just plain... weird? Now with extras.
1. The Beginnings

There was no point in telling Silk that he was grinning like a child -- in  
essence, he was a child -- as he bounced into the room. Noin merely set  
aside the book he'd been reading, dog-earing the page so that he wouldn't  
lose his place and setting the leather-bound book upon a nearby table. Silk  
would tell him what had provoked the bright smile in exhaustive detail, he  
was sure, as soon as he calmed down.  
  
Indeed, it took only a moment for the bouncing to cease and the boy to  
start babbling. Noin held up a hand, and the stream of words slowed to a  
more intelligible pace. "Maron-san. She had her baby -- it's a girl -- and  
they named her Natsuki, and she's /Fin/! Maron-san showed her to me, and  
she's so small! Even though Nagoya-san didn't want me to see her (he threw  
me out after a little while), and nor did the angel-" Noin assumed he meant  
Access Time. "-Maron-san still let me see her."  
  
A wrench of mingled loss and a bittersweet happiness flickered in what was  
left of his soul at the news. Jeanne's happiness, what she'd been looking  
for, was complete. And he wasn't a part of it. He'd often considered fading  
back into the shadows to brood and be alone in his contemplation, but he'd  
spent too much time in the ningenkai, and far too many emotions had  
resurfaced for him to truly fit back into the world of the few demons that  
still lived.  
  
Silk was staring at him blankly, his words having trailed off. He was  
expecting a reaction typical of his master. Very well. "You saw Jeanne?  
What was she doing? And why did you go without my permission?"  
  
And the explanations began to roll out of Silk as smoothly as his namesake,  
just like a child caught in the middle of mischief.  
  
***  
  
It was another day, just like the days had been for the past several  
centuries. Noin, resting comfortably in a well-padded armchair, was staring  
at a page in another of his books. Try as he might, he couldn't seem to get  
past the first three words, their flowing, elegant French failing to grasp  
his attention as they had in the past.  
  
With a sigh, he deposited the book on the table at his elbow, steepling his  
hands in front of his face. Five years since the day Silk had brought him  
the news, and he'd not felt the restless need to move that had driven him  
for so long. The boy's words from so long ago had driven those urges out.  
  
A light wind ruffled the pages of the book he'd set aside, finally settling  
upon a page he skipped whenever he read the book. A poem was written  
therein, so familiar that it caused him to ache as he had when he had first  
read the simple lines.  
  
/O Jeanne, sans scrupule et sans portrait,  
toi qui savais que le tombeau des heros  
est le coeur des vivants... /  
  
/Oh Jeanne, without scrupule nor portrait,  
You who knew that the tombs of heroes  
Are the hearts of the living.../  
  
It was, of course, untrue that she had left no portrait -- she had, in many  
ways. Literally, she had a large portrait in the church in Rouen, and she  
herself was a living portrait in the current day as Nagoya Maron. And yet,  
the words still rang true: she had known the hearts of her soldiers and  
guards, and had treasured their lives. Their deaths -- for deaths were  
inevitable in the battles against the English that had concealed Jeanne's  
true intention -- had hurt her, and the then-human Noin Claude had been the  
one person she had allowed herself to cry with.  
  
It was that that had driven him to give up everything -- his life, his  
faith in God and the pure love he'd had for her -- to see her again. And  
the irony was that he wasn't that person anymore; he was not the one she  
turned to for love and comfort. And that was both why he stayed and why he  
never touched her life.  
  
He snapped the book shut with an abrupt sweep of his hand and stared out at  
the clear skies through the open window. God had a sense of humor, and this  
had been a badly-timed example of it.  
  
"Very amusing," he growled, adding a few choice curses in French and  
several other languages as he stalked away, in search of a shadow to brood  
in.  
  
***  
  
God's sense of humor was even more in evidence as he stared, several hours  
later, at Maron. She was standing on his doorstep, one hand still poised to  
knock at his door, her brown eyes wide and hesitant. He recovered quickly,  
moving to the side and gesturing for her to come in.  
  
"Thank you, Noin. Natsuki-chan?" She reached down with one slender hand --  
Noin's mind momentarily flashed back to a memory of Jeanne's hands, so much  
more callused than this woman's -- for a small, pixieish figure.  
  
"A family visit?" He asked with a touch of wry sarcasm, arching a brow at  
her sudden smile. "Silk has been visiting you, then? I hope that he hasn't  
eaten all of your food."  
  
It was safer to stick to such topics, he mused as he led them towards a  
sitting room. It was used little, but it was still a more gracious room  
than his study. Natsuki clung to her mother's hand, her green eyes fixed  
upon him in a faintly unnerving stare. It was as though she were measuring  
him against some unconscious flicker of memory. Then she smiled, and all  
traces of that too-old expression vanished in a delightful burble of  
laughter.  
  
He supposed that he'd been measuring her against her former self as well,  
in a way. It wasn't a fair comparison, in truth. "Let me get some tea,  
Nagoya-san." He ignored the brief, unvocalized protest at his formality,  
already on his way to prepare the hospitality.  
  
As his hands automatically set everything out, his mind worried over the  
puzzle of her sudden appearance, turning it this way and that, examining  
every angle. The boy couldn't know that she was here; he would've been  
here, jealously guarding what he considered his. Fin's presence was another  
twist. Nothing was simple when one was dealing with Jeanne, he noted as he  
retrieved three cups, setting them on a tray beside the steaming teapot and  
the sugar.  
  
Natsuki was still sitting next to Maron, though she showed signs of  
impatience; her feet were swinging aimlessly over the edge of the chair,  
and her eyes lit up with interest at the sight of him. It was lucky, he  
supposed, that he was in human guise; what such a young child (even if she  
was Fin Fish in essence) would make of a demon was unknown.  
  
They sipped the tea in silence for a moment, the fragrance drifting upwards  
in the steam. Maron broke the silence, setting the half-empty teacup down  
with a soft clink. "Noin..." She trailed off for a moment, looking down at  
her hands. "I wanted to tell you..."  
  
Natsuki took this moment to intervene, slipping her hand out of her  
mother's and hopping lightly down to the floor. She watched him for a  
moment, then walked over. "Mama wanted to say thank you. An' to say sorry."  
  
She knew, somehow. Noin stared at the child, lips twitching as he spared a  
moment to glance at Maron's rather shocked expression. Amusement, an  
emotion long forgotten, flickered into life as Fin -- no, she truly wasn't  
Fin, she was Natsuki -- put her hands on her hips and stared flatly back at  
him with bright green eyes. She was obviously expecting an answer. "You get  
your bluntness from your father, I suppose." Some humanly impish part of  
him chuckled wickedly at the words. "The ungrateful boy," he added after a  
moment's pause.  
  
Maron hadn't so much as flinched. Natsuki, on the other hand, had no such  
restraint. "Papa's not 'ngrateful!" she yelled, drawing one slippered foot  
back and letting fly. It connected with his shin, sending a minor spark of  
pain shooting upwards. He frowned at her, then picked her up, holding her  
above him as she struggled.  
  
"Your father has been ungrateful since the beginning of time, little one,"  
Noin said, sighing. He couldn't hold her up there forever, some small part  
of him noted; it would be pointlessly cruel. Settling her upon his lap, he  
arched a brow at her. "And there has been very little to change that in all  
the years."  
  
He was surprised that Maron hadn't protested; she simply continued to watch  
him, her expression closed. A tug at the ribbon that held his hair back --  
and kept him in his present appearance -- drew his attention back to  
Natsuki. Somehow, it was impossible not to like the child. The fact that  
she was the physical representation of his loss somehow held very little  
meaning. "'S pretty," Natsuki said, playing with it. He sighed, then gently  
took her hand away from it, forcing himself to frown at her.  
  
She seemed to know the frown for the sham it was, for she reached for the  
ribbon again, tugging it almost all the way out. "Little one," he said,  
grasping her hand again, "It's not safe to play with that ribbon."  
  
"Natsuki-chan," Maron's voice was admonishing, but there was an almost  
gleeful note in the words. "Leave the ribbon alone, please."  
  
"Noin-sama, I-" Silk had padded into the room in human form, halting as he  
saw Natsuki and Maron.  
  
Natsuki's delighted laughter broke the silence as she hopped off of Noin's  
lap and bolted over to Silk, throwing her arms around his waist.  
"Silk-niichan!"  
  
Both Noin and Maron wore pained expressions at the exclamation.  
  
***  
  
'Thank you and sorry'. Such odd sentiments from a child barely old enough  
in physical terms to understand the basics of such things. 


	2. Pieces

AN: Sadly, I'm not likely to ever finish my fanfic, due to RL taking over most of my free time. While digging through an old hard drive, however, I found these bits that were supposed to go into later chapters of this fic. Spot the references. XD

--

Where once Noin had watched and guarded Kusakabe Maron, he now found himself watching Nagoya Natsuki. Not through any sense of loyalty -- that was, he reflected at times, the failure in the Devil's methods; the only loyalty he commanded was through fear, save in Fin Fish's case so long ago -- but because the child managed to get herself into more scrapes than anyone he'd ever known.

It was also fun to see Access Time's reincarnation spluttering red-faced when Noin returned a wayward six-year-old Natsuki after an afternoon of being hauled around to what seemed like every candy store in the entire city, unbeknownst to Natsuki's family, but how was Noin to know that she'd decided to run away?

She also had a disconcerting tendency to want to help anyone she felt might be hurt -- more often than not, Noin had to appear from nowhere to drag her out of a situation where her cheery good-will was on the verge of being taken advantage of, or her attempts at helping were rebuffed (he'd nearly killed the dog that bit her, then realized the dog was in a blind panic due to the ugly gash on its paw -- he took that one to the Sakurazuka Veterinary Clinic).

Noin realized that he was slowly regaining human emotion, beyond the obsession that'd driven him to give up his soul in the first place. Jeanne would not be reborn, save for through her own pure soul -- no more God-given power, there -- and somehow, it was an end to the need to possess her. Not that he could explain this to Natsuki, so much, but the child seemed to understand.

--

"He just makes me so MAD, Noin! It's not like we're destined to be together or anything like that, but you wouldn't know it from how HE acts! Oooooh, it's so frustrating." A fifteen-year-old Natsuki was stomping across the carpet in his library as Noin looked over her homework. "And what are YOU laughing at?!"

He couldn't really help it. He'd let a little chuckle escape when fate was mentioned. "Just this piece here," he lied smoothly, tapping his pen against the loopy cursive of Natsuki's attempts at French. "You wound up saying that your mother's horses were brown, rather than her hair. As for Minazuki-kun... I could always warn him off for you."

She stopped her pacing and stared at him. "Uh..." Pause. "Noooo, that's okay. I mean, I don't really want him /hurt/ and I do sort of like him but he really /is/ making me mad. And don't you dare tell him I said I liked him!"

Noin's eyes glinted with humor. "I wouldn't dare think of it, 'demoiselle. Now, about this homework..."

--

Maron sat across from him, sipping her tea and watching him over the rim of her cup. She wasn't ageless, but all the lines on her face were happy, small crinkles of laughter at the corners of her eyes and smile-lines rather than frowns. "You haven't changed, and I'm surprised that Natsuki never comments on it -- but then, I have never really asked her how much she remembers or knows."

"Enough to regard remembering more a burden rather than a blessing, my dear. I commend her for that restraint. Have she and that pest of an ex-angel settled in yet?" He knew better than to comment on his lack of aging. "Thank you for the photos of the wedding. I'd rather not have missed it, but churches do tend to leave me rather uncomfortable."

"Mm. I doubt that you've even tried to enter one in the last ten years, Noin."

--


End file.
